War and Art in the Information Age

Menu

We’re delighted to share our first Aesthetics of Drone Warfare podcast, a conversation with Brisbane-based artist, Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox. Kathryn speaks about drones, temporality, distance, clouds, meta-veillance, existential risk, the Anthropocene, painting, and the relationship between academic research and creative practice. There’s also a shout-out to our conference keynote, Derek Gregory, among many other important researchers!

Her ‘dronescapes’ are currently being shown in a solo exhibition at the POP Gallery in Brisbane from 27 August — 7 September 2019.

Below are two pieces of artwork that are referenced and especially relevant to the discussion in the podcast. More of Kathryn’s work can be found on her blog, which has been archived on PANDORA, Australia’s national archive for online sites ‘of significance and long-term research value,’ since 2014.

Drones have now become commercial and readily available, with innovators promising unprecedented solutions to sectors as wide ranging as agriculture, energy, public safety, and construction. But this multi-billion-dollar industry is founded upon the technology’s origins in a military context, and drone warfare is rapidly redefining the meaning of war, peace, and their temporal and geographical boundaries. This project explores the issues surrounding drone warfare through the prism of aesthetics: aesthetics understood as art, and as the relationship between the body, the self, and the material environment. Combining surveillance with targeting, satellite imaging with ground-level intelligence, drones alter how war is experienced by pilot, target, and spectator.

To examine the impact of this information-based, algorithmic apparatus on the cultural consciousness, this project will bring together writers and artists, museum curators and NGOs, through three engagement events to reflect on the art of drone warfare:

A public panel featuring leading artists and thinkers about drone warfare

Film screenings featuring works about drone art and drone warfare, introduced by an expert and followed by post-screening discussions

An international, interdisciplinary conference held at the Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield

In addition, this website will include blog posts of interviews with artists and writers working on the aesthetics of drone warfare, alongside event recaps and summaries.